Blasts in Bangkok Add to Suspicions About Iran

A member of a Thai bomb squad inspected the scene after explosions rocked a Bangkok neighborhood on Tuesday. The Thai police arrested two suspects.Credit
European Pressphoto Agency

BANGKOK — A series of explosions rocked a residential neighborhood here on Tuesday, leading the Thai authorities to a cache of bombs in a rented house and the capture of two men who the Thai police said carried Iranian passports. Thai officials said that two other suspects, whom they believed to be Iranians, were being sought, and that one of them had fled to neighboring Malaysia.

Witnesses said three men, who appeared to be foreigners, fled a house in the Sukhumvit neighborhood of Bangkok after an explosion in the early afternoon destroyed the house’s roof. One escaped and another was detained at the city’s main international airport.

The fourth suspect, a woman, was not at the house at the time of the explosion, but is being sought because she rented the house and was occasionally seen there, the police said. Witnesses and the police said the third man who left the house, bleeding and seemingly disoriented, lobbed two explosive devices, one at a taxi and later another at approaching police officers, and the second blast severed the man’s legs and wounded several Thais.

It was possible that the men were simply arms smugglers, drug traffickers or gangsters in a city known as a hub of illicit activity. But the reported nationalities of the two captured suspects raised suspicions that the suspects were part of what Israel has called a terrorist campaign by Iran and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah aimed at Israeli targets, an accusation denied by Iran and Hezbollah.

Thai authorities said on Wednesday that the type of explosives found in the house could be used to “target individuals.”

“The destructive power did not reach the level of being able to target groups of people or big buildings,” Wichean Potephosree, the head of Thailand’s national security council, said at a briefing for reporters on Wednesday.

The events in Bangkok came a day after Israeli diplomatic personnel were targeted by bombers in the capitals of Georgia and India with methods that were remarkably similar to attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years, for which Iran has blamed Israel. Both countries, avowed enemies, are locked in an increasingly tense dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

Photo

Bomb squad officials inspected the site of an explosion in Bangkok on Tuesday.Credit
Nicolas Asfouri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Thai officials said it was premature to speculate on the purpose of the explosives cache. But Israeli officials blamed Iran. Outside experts did not rule out that possibility, but some expressed skepticism, partly because of the seeming amateurishness of the suspects.

“The attempted terrorist attack in Bangkok proves once again that Iran and its proxies continue to perpetrate terrorism,” said Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister. Mr. Barak, who had been in Bangkok for a few hours on Sunday, made his comments in Singapore, according to a statement from his office.

In Washington, the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said the episodes in Thailand, Georgia and India “come on the heels of other incidents that clearly had links back to Iran.”

She also said, “We are going to await the results of these investigations.”

Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Israel’s public security minister, issued the country’s bluntest warning of retaliation so far, though without naming Iran. The Associated Press quoted him as telling Israel Radio on Tuesday, “We know who carried out the terror attacks, we know who sent them, and Israel will settle the score with them.”

Some terrorism experts expressed caution about what they called a rush to judgment. Will Hartley, the editor of Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center in London, said in an e-mail, “The attacks in India, Georgia and now Thailand have all been highly amateurish, and lack the sophistication that would normally be expected from an operation” by either Hezbollah or Iran’s external operations wing, the Quds Force.

Others also took note that it seemed illogical for Iran to carry out an attack on Indian soil precisely when it is seeking to cultivate good relations with India, which has been resisting American pressure to join a Western-led effort to isolate Iran economically.

TimesCast | Bangkok Explosions

Israeli officials said that Israeli forensic teams were in New Delhi and Tbilisi, Georgia, helping the local authorities investigate the bombings, a standard practice whenever Israelis are the targets of attacks abroad.

For the past month, Israeli and Thai security forces had been cooperating on a separate case of a possible planned terrorist attack. The Thai authorities said Israeli intelligence agents had warned that a group of people who appeared to be from Hezbollah were planning to strike tourist sites. Shortly after that warning, a Lebanese man was arrested at Bangkok’s main airport as he tried to leave the country.

Thai officials said they could not fully explain Tuesday’s events.

The three men had rented and occupied the house for the past several weeks, said Laxme Kondan, a housecleaner who lives on the same street. The police searched the house and discovered C4 explosives and at least two improvised explosive devices, said Maj. Gen. Wichai Sangprapai, the deputy metropolitan commissioner.

A passer-by on a motorcycle, Wichai Tiwaree, said that soon after the explosion in the house, he saw “a guy walking in a very unusual way.”

“I saw blood coming out of his ears,” Mr. Wichai said. He then heard another blast, he said.

The police said that the man tried to hail a taxi and threw an explosive device, possibly a hand grenade, when it did not stop, destroying its front half.

Mr. Wichai said he then saw the man running up a busy street. “People were yelling, ‘Get him! Get him!’ “ he said.

Thai news media reports identified him as Saci Morabi. Among his belongings, the police found a receipt from a hotel in the Thai city of Chonburi, said Col. Varavudh Thaweechaikarn, a police officer. “The man put his nationality as Iranian when he checked into the hotel,” he said. The police also found Iranian currency in the man’s wallet and said he was carrying an Iranian passport.

In the early evening, a second suspect, identified in the Thai media as Mohammad Hazaei, 42, was detained at Bangkok’s main international airport. Thailand’s immigration police said he was carrying an Iranian passport and was in Thailand on a tourist visa.

Thomas Fuller reported from Bangkok, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, John H. Cushman Jr. from Washington, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong.

A version of this article appears in print on February 15, 2012, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Explosions In Thailand Cast Suspicion On Iranians. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe